THE Friday Boys are a disparate group of men spread across Tyneside who meet once a week - 'always on a Friday' - to talk about the arts, raise a glass to recently departed heroes and villains and, at the evening's end, down a whisky or two. The FBs have only one golden rule - talk of the working week is strictly off-limit.

Sunday, 27 February 2011

Marlowe is hired to tail the mysterious Betty Mayfield all the way to the seaside town of Esmerelda, without knowing why or the identity of his employer. It's not long before he realises that he's not the only one on the trail, and that he too is being watched. Toby Stephens plays Philip Marlowe in a landmark series bringing all of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels to Radio 4.

Stephen Wyatt (dramatist) is a Sony Award Winning Playwright. Recent work for R4 includes dramatising three of the Complete Ripley series including The Talented Mr Ripley for Saturday Afternoon, The Yellow Plush Papers for 11.30am and Tom Jones for Classic Serial. His original play Memorials for the Missing won a Sony Award in 2008.

Friday, 25 February 2011

Unbelievably, Bob Dylan is 70 in May. The Captain’s Tower is a birthday present anthology of poems concerned with Dylan’s life, his work, and his cultural impact. One of the most distinguished lyricists of the post-war period, Dylan has entertained and inspired poets, writers generally and millions of ordinary fans with the imagery, wit and technique of his writing, be it in songs of love, protest, faith or pure Dylan-ness.

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

ARSONISTS were being hunted today after destroying a former Tyneside pub in an attack.

Detectives launched the probe after the blaze tore through the former Stereo Nightclub in City Road, on Newcastle’s Quayside, last night.

The blaze gutted the three-storey building, which was empty, and destroyed the top floor and roof.

The rest of the building, which used to be the Barley Mow pub before being re-named the Frog and Firkin, was severely damaged by smoke and water.

Fire chiefs believe the blaze was started deliberately in two places – the ground floor and second floor.

A Tyne & Wear Fire Service spokesman said: “The furnishings were used to start two fires, the first of which was located on the second floor.

“This fire destroyed that floor and the roof.”

Eighteen firefighters and five fire engines from Colby Court, West Denton and Gateshead spent more than two-and-a-half hours putting out the flames as crowds gathered outside.

Photography student Josh Couchman, who lives in a flat across the street, said: “It was just before 6pm and I was in my room when I heard sirens echoing around the Quayside. Minutes later I could smell smoke in my flat.

“When I looked out the window I could see the old nightclub on fire, the flames were coming through the roof so I went outside and started taking pictures.

“The place was flooded with fire engines and firefighters, who were all trying to put out the flames. It took them a while because the fire was so big.

“The nightclub has been boarded up for ages, I don’t think it’s been used for a while. It’s lucky that no-one was hurt.”

Detectives were today gathering evidence at the scene but insisted the exact cause of the fire had not been established.

A police spokesman said: “At 6.09pm yesterday, police received a report of a fire at a derelict building on City Road, Newcastle.

“Officers attended and the road was closed temporarily between Melbourne Street and Davison Street and from the Quayside to Sallyport.

“Inquiries are ongoing into the cause of the fire.”

A Tyne & Wear Fire and Rescue Service spokesman added: “Firefighters were called to the incident at 5.45pm and were on scene until 8.10pm. There were no persons reported trapped and the police were informed.”

Stereo was an award-winning bar before it closed last year and has remained unoccupied since.

Anyone who has information about the cause of the fire should call Northumbria Police on 03456 043 043.

The Barley Mow used to be a great pub with a somewhat Bohemian air. Populated by students, ex-students, wannabe students and that old guy with the harmonica and the dog that would entertain/annoy you for the price of a pint - of rather good beer, too, I seem to recall. The only drawback I remember was that the upstairs toilet was one of the worst in Newcastle. Shitty would be an apt word for it. Still, a small price to pay...

Hard to believe that students would go to such a place and drink real ale when we live in an era when pouring cheap blue vodka in your eyes on mummy and daddy's expense account is all the rage, but it did happen. I was there.

Those were the days before Newcastle was being marketed as 'party city' to attract stag and hen parties and people from Blackpool looking for somewhere more sophisticated. There were several decent bars around the area - nearly all of them are gone.

At some point, as the Quayside became more developed and smartened up, more bars opened towards the west and the Barley was taken over by the Frog and Firkin chain and renamed FOG and Firkin (that's 'FOG', Chronic writer, 'FOG'). It was never the same. Customers drifted away and the place was lifeless.

Next came Stereo. Stereo? Never been there and never had the desire to be there. By that time, of course, the 'smart' business crowd preferred to be ripped off at The Pitcher and Piano and be distracted by the Eastern European prostitutes from the new blocks of flats across the Millennium Bridge - or they'd moved along the Quayside to the delights of Jimmyz and the Quilted Camel (fortunately leaving favourite FNB haunts well alone).

And then... Well, too many bars, I guess. The Labour council encouraged the development of bars along Osborne Road, allegedly to teach the people of Jesmond a lesson for repeatedly electing the city's only Tory councillor and to capture both the increasing population of student drinkers and the more middle-aged crowd from Gosforth and the coast who associate sophistication with drinking shit beer outside, next to busy a road. This was also the era of the Gate, which attracted the wealthier younger drinkers who like breathing in recycled air, and finally, the opening of a series of bars on Collingwood Street that were originally intended to attract upmarket drinkers, but which were full of the usual suspects in no time at all.

The Bigg Market remains popular with a certain crowd of sixteen-eighteen year-olds and their parents can be found in the Old George and what used to be the Blackie Boy. During the week, however, some of the bars are closed and those that aren't, are, I suspect kept open only for the benefit of the aforementioned vodka-swilling students who buy three shots for the price of one, whatever that means...

Nightclubs on the Quayside have closed down or only open for a few nights a week. Last time I walked back across the Tyne Bridge from the beloved Central, there were more taxis on the Quayside than there were people. And that was on a Friday night.

Recession? Yes, to be sure, but (whisper it loudly): too many bars!

As for the fire here, it was noticeable that the Chronic removed the comments section once people started suggesting the possibility of it being an insurance job. The place had, after all, been shut down for a while and an empty building going up in flames isn't exactly an unusual phenomenon on the Quayside. Of course, let me just say that in my opinion, it couldn't possibly happen in such an honest, graft-free business.

Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophyby Robert B. Pippin

In 2008, Robert Pippin, professor of Social Thought and Philosophy at the University of Chicago, delivered the Castle Lectures at Yale. They now form the basis of a book with a forbidding picture of John Wayne as Ethan Edwards (from The Searchers) on the cover. So this is a university press book on “Political Philosophy,” but it is a movie book, too. That at least is the hope; Yale University Press is asking $35 for it.

Let me say straightaway that it is a very thoughtful, observant book, well worth the time for any reader who takes Hawks, Ford, and the Western seriously. How far it truly explores political philosophy I can’t say. But I take seriously the attempt to look at these films carefully and to interpret them in a much larger national spirit. The films are Red River (1948), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and The Searchers (1956), and I think it’s worth saying—or urging Professor Pippin to consider—that “we” don’t make films like that any more. Indeed, we hardly make Westerns, “our” American genre, let alone pictures with the resonance and lasting power of these three. Is that because Hawks and Ford had their roots in the nineteenth century, when the West was still the “old” West, or is it because everyone now has given up thoughts of mainstream movies bearing upon our contemporary philosophy? For instance, I would love to hear Professor Pippin’s reading of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007).

There’s no question about the thematic richness of these films, though I would argue that while Red River and The Searchers are made with cinematic passion, Liberty Valance has a disconcerting, rather cursory black-and-white look, plus the flagrant problem of James Stewart (fifty-four at the time) trying to play a much younger man. Never mind. Liberty Valance is an intriguing exploration of one of Ford’s favorite issues—the confusion of truth and legend. Red River is a story about a mutiny (or a revolution) in which, actually, the old order is renewed. And The Searchers is a model story of vengeance, deeply scarred by racism, sexual guilt and something that one might call the intractability of the rebel figure in American legend.

Of these three films, it is the one Pippin values the most. He calls it “one of the greatest and most ambitious films ever made,” and he argues very well for Ethan Edwards as an Ahab-like figure, a searcher blind to many of his own problems, a man who has secretly loved his brother’s wife and who then goes in pursuit of a niece kidnapped by a Comanche chief named Scar. That search lasts five or seven years (commentators disagree on the exact period, because the film feels eternal), long enough for the girl, Debbie, to become both Scar’s bride and Natalie Wood (an uneasy combination). Moreover, it becomes clear over the years that Ethan is searching because he means to kill his own niece to erase the damage done to her, their family, and the white race.

There is great daring in the film (made on the eve of civil rights anger) and no one would deny its power or mystery. Indeed, it is a movie that exerted enormous influence on many filmmakers who would follow John Ford. At its conclusion, instead of carrying out the execution that obsesses him, there is a scene of extraordinary tenderness (or sentiment) where Ethan reclaims Debbie as his kin and takes her home. But then, with the young woman restored to a community she hardly knows any longer, Ethan himself cannot enter the house. We see him on the threshold in an iconic, hesitant pose. Then he turns away and the door closes, shutting him out. Ethan is unfit for civilization. And that harsh verdict seldom concludes an American film, least of all one with John Wayne as its star.

But here we come to a limitation in this book. Professor Pippin is an academic. As such, he is inclined to assume that the films he discusses have been made for his discussion. But did Hawks and Ford really have him in mind? Did they exercise the lonely rigor with their own stories that one might have expected from Melville or Faulkner? Were they that concentrated or single-minded, or were they presiding over an untidy collective enterprise?

Already in this book, Pippin has noted that at the end of Stagecoach (1939), which he treats reasonably as a parable on whether the American community can hold, the John Wayne character escapes with his girl to this statement from another character: “There’s two more saved from the blessings of civilization.” And I have to ask whether that amounts to a statement in political philosophy or just a wry way of ending the movie—with the movie as an entertainment aimed at a mass audience? The political equivalent would be a president tormented by indecision over a “right answer” who ends up saying something that “plays.” The media guide the message.

Equally, Red River—where the prospect of lethal revenge is set up as Matt Garth takes Tom Dunson’s herd of cattle away from his tyrannical control—ends happily. The two men supposedly headed for fatal confrontation are told to grow up and recognize that they really love each other. Even those who cherish Red River have had some trouble being reconciled to that sudden switch. In the same way, an editor—the editor of a novel—might ask, doesn’t Ethan need to kill Debbie? Don’t the arc of the book and the pitch of the writing demand it?

But that is more than Warner Bros., Wayne, or Ford could tolerate. In both Red River and The Searchers Wayne found himself as an actor in malice and an intimidating attitude to weakness. But the ending of The Searchers—while beautifully done—is a compromise. It ignores many things—like the possibility that Debbie loved Scar (Natalie Wood does not look as if she has been suffering with him). Nor does it take account of the difficulties she will have restored to whiteness. In the real West, white women once taken by Indians were seldom accepted by white society.

So this possibility exists: that Ethan goes back to the wilderness because it makes a “magnificent” gestural ending and because it reaffirms the old and very romantic notion of an essential solitariness in the American hero, an attitude that is fundamentally opposed to politics, but which has been like a lever on manhood in the years since the events of The Searchers. Movies are not novels. They are great public shows. And all these films are more touched by commerce than Pippin ever allows. The legend that Ford preferred, and the dream in which Hawks was immersed are reflections of a story-telling forever diverted or warped by the business of pictures.

David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder.

40 Odd Years into an exceptionally prolific and storied career, Loudon Wainwright III is being celebrated with an aptly named career-spanning 4-CD/1-DVD box set, including a 40-page book, with an essay by renowned journalist/author David Wild and an introduction by filmmaker and box set co-producer Judd Apatow, to be released by Shout! Factory on May 3, 2011.

The first 200 to pre-order from ShoutFactory.com will receive an exclusive booklet signed by Loudon Wainwright III himself.

“40 Odd Years” features songs from throughout Wainwright’s career, including works of brilliance such as “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry” from 1973’s Attempted Mustache, which Johnny Cash would record with producer Rick Rubin decades later, to the genuinely odd “Dead Skunk,” which became a #16 pop hit and thus a true novelty in the Wainwright canon, to highlights from his most recent projects, including cuts from the Grammy®-winning album High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. The 3+ hour DVD includes an extremely rare documentary made for Dutch television entitled One Man Guy, TV appearances on the BBC, Saturday Night Live, and Austin City Limits, as well as several unreleased concert performances.

Judd Apatow, who co-produced the set with Wainwright, and who credits the artist as a great influence on his own career, writes in his introduction “I wanted to do what he has always done: to be brutally honest, emotional, hilarious and sweet all at the same time. Whenever I wonder what my tone might be, if I am confused, I just listen to a Loudon Wainwright song.”

In his essay, David Wild notes that “Wainwright has long been one of our most fearless troubadours. His art is fearless even though his songs are shot full of fear and fun, false pride, tortured insecurity and a lovely and graceful kind of self-deprecating genius. Whether he’s being devastatingly funny, fully self-lacerating or just brutally confessional, Loudon Wainwright III has always been a writer who sharply expresses his own distinct point of view on our larger human comedy.”

The New York-born Grammy-winning songwriter has traveled quite a path. Discovered by Atlantic’s Nesuhi Ertegun and John Hammond, Sr., the Columbia A&R man who had already signed Bob Dylan and would soon sign Bruce Springsteen, Wainwright established his literary yet utterly unpretentious take on the grand folk music tradition right from the start. The son of Loudon Wainwright II, a prominent editor and columnist for Life magazine, Wainwright III studied acting at Carnegie Mellon University before dropping out to pursue a music career. After a short time performing at clubs in Boston and New York City, he signed his first record deal, in 1968. As Wainwright recalls, “I made the first two albums that were critical successes, but no one bought them, and Atlantic dropped me. So then Clive Davis signed me at Columbia with the understanding that I’d actually try and play with some other musicians too.”

A year or two later Wainwright appeared, albeit fleetingly, as Captain Spaulding — “the singing surgeon” — on three episodes during the third season of the historic television series M*A*S*H. That was the opening salvo of an impressive second career for Wainwright — as an actor. He played a fantastically flawed father on the Fox TV series Undeclared, his first in a series of projects with Apatow. He has also appeared in such films as Jacknife, 28 Days, Big Fish, The Aviator, Elizabethtown and Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, in which Wainwright played an obstetrician and contributed some fantastic songs, including “Daughter” (written by Peter Blegvad) and “Grey In L.A.”

’40 Odd Years’ — which gathers together all of Loudon Wainwright III’s best work — displays his unique approach to music making. Rather than write about global politics or simply sing shallow love songs, Wainwright has focused on writing about life’s more domestic, and ultimately universal, aspects. He has written extensively about family and his children, three of whom – Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Wainwright Roche – are songwriters. Other themes include love, lust and the horrible and unkind things we do to one another in our personal lives.

“I’m lucky — it still feels like there’s work to do, and I’m doing it,” says the 64-year-old singer-songwriter. “I hate the travel, the airports, the hotels, but I love the job itself, which is writing the songs and doing the shows. As a kid I had a dream of being a performer, and lo and behold it came true. Not only that but it turned out I was a writer, something I didn’t necessarily want to become, probably because my old man seemed so tortured and miserable about his work. But I became one anyway. So now the plan is to keep performing and writing for as long as possible.”

40 Odd Years Track Listing:

Disc One:

1. School Days
2. I Don’t Care
3. Uptown
4. Be Careful There’s A Baby In The House
5. Saw Your Name In The Paper
6. Dead Skunk
7. New Paint
8. Drinking Song
9. Swimming Song
10. Dilated To Meet You
11. Down Drinking At The Bar
12. The Man Who Couldn’t Cry
13. Whatever Happened To Us?
14. Crime Of Passion
15. Kick In The Head
16. Summer’s Almost Over
17. Just Like President Thieu
18. Golfin’ Blues
19. The Heckler
20. Natural Disaster
21. Red Guitar
22. Hollywood Hopeful
23. IDTTYWLM
24. The Grammy Song

Disc Two:

1. Westchester County
2. I’m Alright
3. Screaming Issue
4. Unhappy Anniversary
5. Your Mother And I
6. Synchronicity
7. Hard Day On The Planet
8. You Don’t Want To Know
9. Bill Of Goods
10. Thanksgiving
11. Your Father’s Car
12. When I’m At Your House
13. The Picture
14. Men
15. So Many Songs
16. Tip That Waitress
17. I’d Rather Be Lonely
18. April Fool’s Day Morn
19. The Acid Song
20. IWIWAL
21. A Year
22. Dreaming

Loudon Wainwright III, the veteran singer-songwriter whose songs over the last four decades have been characterized by black humor, inventive word play and witty observations about relationships, gets his own career retrospective when Shout! Factory Records issues the five-disc “40 Odd Years” box set on May 3.

Filmmaker Judd Apatow, a longtime fan of Wainwright’s skewed sense of humor, is co-producer of the project and wrote the introduction to the 87 tracks on four CDs. Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild has written an essay as part of the 40-page book included with the set.

Apatow, who cast Wainwright as a TV dad in his short-lived Fox situation comedy “Undeclared” and then tapped him to score the music for his film “Knocked Up,” told The Times in 2007: "If I had never been exposed to Loudon, I would probably just be writing fantastic [male anatomy]
jokes, but nothing more. Loudon's work ... is a powerful reminder to me that I must always be
honest, funny and true to myself."

The fifth disc in the box set is a DVD with more than three hours of video of various performances from a musician who in recent years has increasingly been identified as the father of Rufus and Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, who also has recently begun a recording career.

But the family patriarch remains widely respected among fans and critics for trenchant insights into human foibles, even though his strongest showing on the pop charts came with the freak success of his 1973 novelty hit “Dead Skunk,” which peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 16.

Johnny Cash recorded Wainwright’s 1973 song “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry” on his 1994 “American Recordings” album, the first of his latter-day career renaissance collaborations with producer Rick Rubin. Last year, Wainwright's salute to the music of an early 20th century country troubadour, "High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project," won a Grammy Award for traditional folk album.

When Philip Marlowe sees a huge, loudly dressed man casually throwing a bouncer out onto the the pavement as he goes into a bar, he knows it's time to walk away, so he follows him inside. The big guy is Moose Molloy, recently released from an eight year prison sentence and now on the hunt for his old sweetheart, a red-haired nightclub singer named Velma Valento.

Marlowe follows a trail which includes a stick-up, blackmail, an irresistible blonde, a psychic, drugs and murder, and it leads him all the way to the top of a corrupt state of California.

Farewell My Lovely was the second of Chandler's novels featuring Marlowe. It was adapted for the big screen three times.

Robin Brooks (dramatist) has recently dramatised I Claudius in 5 episodes for BBC Radio 4. Other Classic Serials include: Boswell's Life of Johnson, My Cousin Rachel and The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West.

Friday, 18 February 2011

GREAT news reaches us from Yorkland. Da has fully recovered from his recent cosmetic surgery. There's been only one impact from the knife-action - he now speaks English with a distinctive Swedish accent.